


The Grandest Butterfly

by ApatheticByDefault



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Freeform, Gen, M/M, Relationship Study, Through the seasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 12:42:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2270127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticByDefault/pseuds/ApatheticByDefault
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian and Mickey don't just fall in love in time. They fall in love in theories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Grandest Butterfly

**Author's Note:**

> This is intentionally written as somewhat of a pseudo-fairytale, that's why my word choice is what it is.  
> In the first portion of this writing, second person is used. Just to clarify, this is not a mistake on my part because it's part of my expression of the character's inner monologue and is intentional. You, in this case, is a universal You, meaning Mickey is trying to instill logic in himself by means of comparably referencing others, and humanity generally as a whole. The third person used later fits more in keeping the piece in a more relaxed setting, because it's far more adequate at that point to just read between the lines. So I hope there isn't anybody put off by the first few paragraphs for their use of second person! 
> 
> (Also: Due to some issues with the archive, if my fic ever shows up, there may be two versions of this.)

The utter lack of logic in it all is overwhelmingly sense-making.

It does not make sense, in simplistic terms, that chasing, in packs of three and equipped with all the necessary potential to commit battery, a scrawny kid with red hair might someday equate to pulling him into your arms at night and holding him closely but in still silence, not raising your hand to hit but only to fall through strands of his hair and brush them out of his eyes.

Of course, merely allowing him to climb into your bed at all and tear off your shirt before residing to the lower and far more sensitive half of your body is also far a stretch from the death threats that escaped your mouth much before the sighs and muffled groans.

You don't do things halfway. Doing things halfway is just leaving half the chance that, were acts to be committed at all, they would crumble in error, at most sordidly the fault of another.

So, in acts of law and murder, you dispel of all evidence. You complete your actions in all your fear and uncertainty fully or not at all, because your thoughts and words need to be brought to fruition, but the chance for those wary of it to haunt you with allegations that are more officially written than the nightmares you recite to yourself only subconsciously never does.

And so, if you should not leave a bruised boy dead, for the claims your sister makes against her past self and the orange-haired devil she spoke of only in her _own_ shame, there is no reason not to satisfy your urges of a willing counterpart who looks up at you and forgets your weaponry just as surely as you do.

Then, sex is all about feeling, and it is better in accompaniment to more than one. Love is the strongest and most light-casting of them all, so you allow yourself to let it make sense, even if not at first, or second, or even third. Things feel better when they are thought to be lovely too.

Sex makes sense, you've learned of it in every neglected comment and laughed-out chide, so making it feel better, the act of sex to make one feel better at all, makes sense too.

It appears at first glance not to be thought out well and sensibly because, in totality, it is not. But the steps are always reassuring, _so_ , when you amuse yourself at night with the boy beside you and find laughter is as great a release as another you both have practiced at, you simply decide to combine the two.

You're pretty certain love and sex is just better sex, than is sex without love. You just never realised a strong love to its own was often better than both.

~~~

Ian and Mickey are sweet and salty. They most complement each other when they are brought together to be one.

Saltiness is more beautiful after a sugar ache. And cane dust soothes the cringe that follows closely the swallow of reliably acrid crystals. You can ingest both comparably in one solution and feel not the ill effects of one over the other, yet neither truly changes. In the presence of the other, they both sought not to, and there presented itself no need.

That was the purpose of chemistry; to make an element more bearable, but never through its pure destruction. Joined and sharing, as one, the most dangerous things are seen to be not a thing short of amazing, but matter can never truly be made nothing of. And a chemist's recipe runs always the risk that it will, one day, decompose.

Mickey is sitting parallel to Ian, but their heads are both turned in the same direction, and they are comfortable just to their own.

There's a mangled and bent knife in Carl's hands, and it droops to his side. It is _mangled_ only in that its lever is screwed awkwardly to the left, and its ability to be used in assault has been brutally reprimanded.

"Carl!" Ian shouts only in that he is expected to, but his exhaustion leaves no place for swallowed anger. "How the hell did you even manage to break that?"

"There was a huge truck outside!"

"That doesn't even make any sense, the sharp end is constructed from _steel_."

It is a wonder how it could have possibly come to be so broken in. Mickey is sure it should have been indestructible, though, perhaps only one select part of the knife ever stood a chance at being, and it is bound to remain a mystery. The sharpest edge can still be used in an attack, though only less craftily, and one's intention more easily will be made known. But the handle seems to fit more gracefully into the young boy's hand, restfully with every finger lying still atop the other, the pinky supporting each larger ornament.

It is smallest but, in this way, runs a lesser risk of being thoroughly overjoyed of a fight's blood and pain. It is ironic that, unable to defend itself, the hand and shortest finger are in less danger, because they are not poised and calling forth of a fight that, naturally, neither could truly win.

"Well, it looks like this now, so why don't you try explaining it to me, genius!"

"It's _my_ knife. Why are _you_ the one yelling at _me_?"

"My Samurai sword got busted again, and I don't even have a back-up now until it's fixed, _again_."

Ian is sighing heavily, reaching steadfast for what remains in his palm, and Carl digresses. "Look, I'll get you a better one, but just promise me you'll at least _try_ to be more careful next time. This is, like, the sixth round in the last couple years."

Mickey most certainly is not expectant of _that_ , and, while Carl is, his face still twists into an expression that can only be mocking of either's initial surprise. "Really?"

"Yeah." Ian shoves the unspared knife under the mattress of his brother's bed, and it once again locks more impeccably into place. It is supported more thoroughly on both ends: the curved groove of where it has, no doubt, been nicked out of shape, and the glinting edge that scintillates any existing image in all light. It threatens now not to fall through the cracks at the time of night, from the spaces between the wooden plating of each individual level of both Carl and Philip's bunk bed.

Now, when it is not at war with the world, it can be at peace with itself, and it won't be lost in the darkness and various scraps littered throughout the room. That is likely the key. After all, when it does leave the house, it only winds up in ruins.

"Awesome. Thanks, Ian." The crimson-haired sibling takes Carl's head into the breadth of his large hand, to massage at the strands of hair there, before knocking it forward.

"No problem. But I'm not even gonna bother wiping the blood off the blade of the new one I bargain from Raoul."

If Ian's plan to retrieve a replacement is only mindful of the sinister man who makes his life's work in the alleyway behind the OTB, he will not be bargaining at all.

"Wicked!" Carl races only several steps from the room, much before winding his path down the staircase at a moment of hesitation. It is not the time, in respect to Ian's small loss, to freefall from the laundry chute only to land in a heap of artful cotton.

Ian pats the space adjacent to the boy's pillow, admirable in his acceptance and swiftly manifested smile even where Carl is not near.

Mickey places in himself a wonder for Ian's sisters, and his brothers too. He can't be sure their appreciation for Ian can rival the one he feels at a constant.

Ian is thoughtful, of his siblings' needs even where they are far from his reach. But Mickey cannot see that affection as requited, so he challenges himself to give more than they all combined could have ever.

He grabs at the taller boy's arms and maneuvers them in a toss and a yelp to Ian's bed, situated in the corner of the room.

He grips with each hand one of Ian's and pushes them down to the sheets, beside his head and to the familiar sound of gasps, Mickey pressing lightly from atop onto Ian's chest and restricting movement. The steady flow of air slows considerably with his mild shock, but it recovers twice as quickly when Mickey balances on one elbow.

"Why are you so nice, huh?" Mickey asks the question in the exact way a child asks why the sky is blue or where the sun goes at the drop of it from the sky into night. He's accepting of any answer for his acceptance of the fact that Ian is, in fact, quite nice, the sky does present itself blue, and the sun does seem to disappear when the moon makes an appearance. The question is not the root to an argument, _rather_ , it is a small stepping stone in the direction of soon understanding well enough that the answer is eventually known.

Ian looks up at him. "Why shouldn't I be?" Just as quickly as nervousness wracks his body with the thought that Ian feels inherently a need to defend himself, Mickey is calmed. If Ian himself wants not to change, it is all the more likely that he won't.

"Hey, I'm not saying that," Mickey's eyeballs are pink with the stress of opening, quite widely, his eyelids to let them sting at the air. "I'd be like that if I could. Just can't be."

"Yeah, you can. You're like that all the time with me." Ian seems not to blink when he looks into Mickey's eyes. He never yet has broken fully the connection, just shifts them so the white and green-centered orbs can be angled at all times with Mickey's irises and his can be seen back just as surely.

Mickey does look away. He does it always first. Otherwise, Ian might not. He huffs out merely one breath of air slowly until counting is lost, and his pattern of intake, in, out, in, out, has been so distorted that neither boy is cognizant of when he starts breathing in time slots again.

Mickey is not _like that all the time_ , with Ian. He certainly has not been, and Ian should not force himself indefinitely to forget who Mickey was and what he has done to only poetically see truly who he is, above him and smiling sadly.

Ian seems to get it. "Okay. Why not?"

"I don't know, man." Mickey looks away but keeps himself as present in thought and communication as before with an upwards running of his fingers along Ian's jaw. "Maybe I'm just not as _tough_ or level-headed as you, or somethin'. Guess that's what I got you for, huh?"

Mickey is sure that was, among others, a correct response.

"If that's what you need me for. Sure."

He isn't so sure anymore.

"Jesus, Ian. I don't need anything from you, okay? I'm here 'cause I care 'bout you, out of pure selflessness, and all that. Alright?" Ian deserves that, at the least, from someone who will, for once, not take more than he or she dares to give back.

"Does that selflessness extend to fellatio?"

Alright, perhaps it can be said that he does not indeed _deserve_ it...

"Well, not right this _second_!"

Ian laughs heartily, as transparent of his thoughts and emotions as one is while singing, and leans his head up to capture the ebony-haired boy's cheek with a press of his lips that Mickey, in turn, leans into.

Ian uncrosses his arms from where they're pressed against Mickey's waist, then brings them up to grip at each side of Mickey's head to bring his mouth down to his grinning one.

Neither is smiling when their lips touch, both boys' brows furrow, and Mickey's forehead tenses when he leans into the touch.

It is already a well-accepted truth in his mind, and in Ian's too, that kissing him is one of few things that makes Mickey truly happy. It is made more important by the fact that Mickey need not smile to voice that thought for consideration and the handling with care.

~~~

Ian and Mickey both push _things_ down, so they are suspended under lies and fables. But those things are never made invisible, merely, they are hidden, and it is the hidden that is often most worryingly forgotten, till it is one day made a tragedy of.

Mickey keeps them buried so he might pretend every feeling and every truth exists not, but Ian attempts simply to do away with the things that hurt. When they're hard to see, one can pretend they've been conquered, and Ian, after all, has dreams. He cares often more about others than he does ever for himself. But, when those things felt are so strong that they cannot possibly be ignored, strangled under the pressure of plans and notes until they are sprung high into the air, those their hiding sought to protect are, ironically, nowhere to be found, and nowhere to offer help.

Mickey knows this too. He hides himself from predators in a thinly veiled disguise, and he ventures in sheer desperation for the approval of those who, inevitably, will leave both him and his costume bruised.

Ian and Mickey _both_ want to be understood, and they're both understood best traveling across the archway of the empath. Ian stops hiding, and Mickey ceases to pretend there is not anything to be hidden.

But, though they saw through the other's eyes, they'd both silently agreed their spots should stay as they were. Ian didn't need to change, and Mickey didn't either. So long as they both stayed the same, they'd both have someone to love and admire, that love and admiration would remain requited, and they'd need not ever shift.

If either were to gracelessly change, well, the strong love felt would not be the same love at all.

They learn it's okay to live in either way: hiding for yourself, or hiding for others, but it is never, ultimately, _ideal_.

When Ian is with Mickey, and when Mickey is with Ian, he learns not just that it is possible to love better and harder in one's true shell, it is easier, and far more bearable.

There is still no explanation for the turn of events, both the recent and the ones that map a history.

When you take a drop of water and prophesy its ingredient in any sweet, you are puzzled, without all the others.

Ian is a dreamer, and Mickey is a realist, but so are they both.

Ian knows it is the realist who dreams the greatest, for no dream is truly great if it is thought to come easily, and Mickey knows how to get through what's hard.

"How the hell did we actually get here?" The steps are not recalled, the odds were stacked in favour of bitterness, and neither Ian nor Mickey are sure of how two things so strong, a steel edge, and its accompanying handle, could possibly endure each other broken, all the while making their mark in the world as something greater.

Ian and Mickey are not merely bent, they are shaped. And, when they are simply for each other, any shape will do.

"Well, I wanted you," Ian wraps his wrists more tightly together around his companion's waist and softly brushes the point of his nails along the grey acrylic there, "and then, you wanted me, and we're both a little stubborn."

"Ah." Mickey leans forward and feels the crushing of Ian's arm bone where it's assaulted into the mattress, pressed downward under his turning weight. He jolts at the contact and unwinds Ian's arms from where they're joined around him, one skirting his upper shoulder and lightly skimming the shivering hairs there, and the other lying beneath them both, skinny, meager, and supporting both their weights.

Mickey kisses the knuckles of the assaulted arm and its eagerly stretched hand and fingers.

He no longer allows it to lie below him. He brings it up to his neck and teaches Ian's fingers to dance along his chin, even if they don't do it at their own accord.

Ian buries his nose into his collar bone, and, though his face can no longer be seen from above, Mickey can feel more surely the warm passing of breath that reaches his skin through his shirt.

~~~

It does not make sense, simply, that chasing, with the intention to ruin, a small red-haired boy may someday equate to pulling a much taller one into your arms and holding him there.

But using him and being used is perfectly explained, when it makes you feel good, he feels the same, you think feeling it goes well with seeing it, and you can't see your own smile, so you make sure to carve his.

If love is blind, you're sure blindness is just seeing what others can't, and it seems to make him more beautiful, so you are somehow more pleased.

Alone, not one instance explains it, but, _ah_ , together, they do.

You fell in lust, and that is left never unexplained, and from there, you decidedly tripped into love.

Love is the most light-casting feeling of all, and it makes all good ones even better, because things feel better when they are thought to be lovely too.

Then, if you were to love at all, it might as well be unconditionally. And so you do.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm actually quite proud of this, but I'm sure very few people will actually get anything out of it, because you really don't unless you read it thoroughly. Which I know a lot of people don't do, and I understand, it would just be helpful, and I know my writing is a mouthful. But I'm quite fond of that quality, so, if you completed it, I'm simply glad!  
> P. S. If anyone is wondering, yes, Ian and Mickey are the knife, metaphorically speaking. I often see fics listed as character studies. Could this be both that and a relationship study? Surely, that's what I was going for.


End file.
